Format

• Hey Friends

• Today's Sponsor: Clarity Construction

• Thought of the Week

• Mission | What I’m Working On

• Life Design | Tips, Tools & Time Hacks

• Commerce & Capital

• Trending Now

  • 🎙 Podcasts, Music & Social Audio

  • 🌍 Social Media

  • 📚 Books

  • 📰 Articles

Hey Friends

Remember those pre-pandemic days of seemingly endless prosperity? Years later, our collective disenchantment with legacy economies is glaringly palpable.

Job markets are flailing — the onslaught of AI is relentless, and consumer confidence continues to plummet as the impact of inflation further encroaches its way into our daily lives via a confusing new litany of taxes, fees and tolls.

Just this past week in Canada, a leaked RCMP report painted a bleak picture of the economy – so dire, in fact, that the details are supposedly being hidden from the public for fear of social unrest.

There is no time to sit back and pine for the halcyon days of 2019.

It's time to take control of your future, yours and your families.

The core premises of our traditional economies - our capitalist structure based on public markets / private equity investment, real estate speculation, technology sector and small business ownership that has more or less held the West together basically since WW2 - are now being challenged daily by economic realities evidently unmoored from fiscal policies.

The whispers are turning into shouts – the old economic model isn't delivering any more for many Canadians and Americans.

Developing a portfolio of multiple income streams is no longer an option – it's mission critical. This includes keeping tabs on the creator economy, e-commerce, SaaS products, real estate, and angel investing.

It includes looking at different markets, as well. A recent 15-month digital nomad journey through Central and South America opened my eyes to Latin America’s investment potential.

Spanish as a second language is the Dragon on the Rise. Forget "nice-to-have" – Spanish is now a must-have life skill for any entrepreneur or business professional looking to thrive in the Western Hemisphere. Look at the numbers: nine of the ten most populous cities in the Americas are predominantly Spanish-speaking.

The tenth? New York City. What’s clear is that the future of business is multilingual, and learning Spanish is key.

The world is changing, and the economic landscape of the Western world is evolving daily. By embracing new skills, exploring new markets, and building diversified income streams and being deliberate about life design — you can take control of your financial future and thrive in 2024 and beyond.

Adelante, y Hacia Arriba!

Onward and Upward,

Moshe Modeira

Editor-In-Chief

Today's Sponsor: Clarity Construction

_{Design and Build with confidence. Clarity Construction and their roster of top industry experts are with you — every step of the way.}

Thought of the Week

Let's face it, the economic winds are howling a mighty tune right now.

Inflation seems to be a runaway train at the moment, eroding consumer spending power by the week and creating acute existential pain for many people globally.

That's where this week's thought comes in – entrepreneurship as a mandatory personal objective.

It’s about taking control of your life. Building your own business or brand – a side gig, offering a freelance service, launching a venture with monetization potential – is the mindset you should be fostering in 2024.

We're bombarded daily with information overload, but make no mistake, this inflationary crunch is forcing a re-evaluation. People are rethinking their business models, their career paths, their whole damn life design.

This economic upheaval might just be the push we need to embrace our inner risk-taker, to finally dust off that business idea that's been collecting cobwebs in the back of our minds. It's about taking charge of our financial destinies, building something that works for us and our families, something inflation can't touch.

So let's ditch the fear, and embrace entrepreneurial spirit. It’s the key to unlocking the purpose-driven, successful future you have been dreaming of.

Mission | What I’m Working On

In this futuristic Wild West of low-code and no-code builder platforms like Bubble and Softr, it’s my opinion that all savvy entrepreneurs / investors should be exploring a) launching a SaaS as a solopreneur, b) partnering with a technical co-founder to launch a SaaS, or c) investing in a small team building SaaS solutions that solve real problems.

Last week I spoke briefly about a soon to launch SaaS product called HeroPage that I am building with my former partners at New Copy. Let’s talk a little about our vision for this software tool.

An acute problem I have now seen everywhere I have ever travelled, a mundane task for the tech-savvy, but a still befuddling experience for most people alive on planet Earth: quickly launching an e-commerce-enabled informational landing page to promote their products or services.

Our SaaS is a landing page builder and marketing automation platform that is the culmination of years of frustration with bloated interfaces, confusing UX/UI experiences and unwieldy subscription costs. We imagine a world where every entrepreneur, brand, and aspiring hustler has access to the digital platforms they need to showcase their business online. Info sites, landing pages, and branded videos are now essential business tools.

The philosophy of our platform is this: online real estate should be a human right. Think of the TOMS Shoes business model — but for SaaS.

With every subscription purchased, another subscription is gifted to an entrepreneur, founder, or brand manager in need. Imagine a young creator in a remote village in Thailand, or a passionate baker in a town in Midwest America — easily accessing the tools they need to create a captivating online destination for their business. Our aim is to drastically level the playing field when it comes to the difficulty of quickly launching a shoppable landing page.

The mindset isn’t just about altruism (though, let's face it, giving back is always heroic). It's about removing the time-consuming frictions and costs that trip up aspiring entrepreneurs. Some other features:

• Hyper-Minimalist, WYSIWYG Design: HeroPage features drag-and-drop simplicity that allows the user to focus on creating — not mastering software. What you see is truly what you get – hyper-minimalist, professional, visually-alluring landing pages reminiscent of the vaunted Teenage Engineering site.

• All-in-One: A HeroPage isn't just simply an informational landing page. It's also a shoppable e-commerce store, and features captivating promo videos (we call them HeroVideos).

• Marketing Automation: HeroPage integrates with existing marketing tools, connecting with social audiences, managing email lists, social media posts, and analytics

There will be more updates soon, including an invitation to sign up. Subscribers of this newsletter will receive a lifetime discount to HeroPage.

Life Design | Tips, Tools & Time Hacks

We all struggle to achieve our daily goals. We set ambitious intentions, only to find ourselves derailed by distractions, forgetfulness, or a lack of direction. In the last year I began to implement an amazing life hack: habit tracking.

Some reasons I have discovered why habit tracking was the missing link in my life, allowing me to optimize my ability to efficiently complete tasks and score highly on daily success benchmarks:

1. Built-in Reminder System: We all have good intentions, but sometimes life gets hectic. Habit tracking acts as a constant nudge, a visual prompt staring you down, reminding you of the commitments you've made to yourself. Instead of relying on willpower alone, habit tracking keeps your goals top of mind.

2. Progress Visualization: There's something incredibly satisfying about witnessing your progress unfold. Habit trackers provide a clear picture of your journey, allowing you to see those little checkmarks accumulate into a streak of accomplishment. This visual reinforcement fuels motivation, making you excited to maintain your momentum.

3. Celebrate the Small Wins: Big goals are exciting, but they can also, often, feel overwhelming. Habit tracking breaks them down into manageable, daily victories. Each completed task becomes a mini-celebration, a positive reinforcement that keeps you moving forward on your path.

4. Fostering Accountability: Let's be honest, sometimes a little external pressure goes a long way. Habit tracking apps often allow you to share your progress with friends or family. This creates a sense of accountability, making you less likely to break your commitment when you know someone's watching (or cheering you on!).

5. Building Momentum for Long-Term Success: Daily wins become building blocks. Habit tracking helps you establish consistent routines, which are the foundation of lasting change. By focusing on small, consistent actions, you're well on your way to achieving your long-term goals.

Habit tracking isn't magic — but it's a powerful tool that significantly increases your odds of daily success

I personally love using this simple, minimalist habit tracker.

Commerce & Capital

Trending Now

🎙 Podcasts, Music & Social Audio

Natalie Lynn x Jack Conte: Patreon founder and hyper-exuberant host of Digital Spaghetti Jack Conte interviews YouTube filmmaking wunderkind Nalalie Lynn in this ICYMI from several months ago that is getting lots of love as many creators, videographers and filmmakers — and those dabbling with video, which includes almost every entrepreneur right now — catch this dazzling sitdown that is a front-row seat to pure, raw creative energy. Many of us have never considered the sheer amount of deliberation and intentionality that goes into video creation. You will be thinking about this video for a long time after watching it.

🌍 Social Media

38 Things I learned over the last 13,952 days of my life so far: Canadian entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson posted this life design tweet on X that deeply resonated with me. I love how Andrew has measured his 38 years by days — and you’ll probably love his lesson #11: Don’t Tell - Storytell.

YouTube is About to Reset - Watch to Prepare: Video is now exceedingly important to sales and marketing. YouTube strategy has been a major conversation piece of every single brand meeting I have advised on since December 2018. One of my favourite agency leads is Scott Simson, a no-nonsense no-fluff content creator headlining Raffiti Media out of Texas. For those of you exploring launching YouTube channels, or already actively growing one for your personal brand or business, you’re going to want to drop into Scott’s universe and hear his sage advice on video marketing and the creator economy.

📚 Books

101 Essays that will Change the way You Think by Brianna Wiest. I’m really enjoying this collection of popular essays by Thought Catalog’s Brianna Wiest. Wiest explores what it means to pursue purpose, uncommon advice on negative thinking, becoming aware of cognitive biases in daily life and a myriad of other human challenges and issues. Brianna is a fantastic writer — it’s hard to put this book down for any length of time.

Be Useful: Seven Tools For Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold isn’t a perfect human being, no one is, but I have historically really respected Arnold’s life story and the valuable lessons that he imparts in the books that he writes and the content that he creates. Be Useful is a very solid reminder about the fundamentals of being a good human, in the words of the Terminator himself.

Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. One of the single most efficient systems I have ever built for myself that has drastically improved my ability to accomplish entrepreneurial tasks and efficiently design my life has been to build a “second brain” (mine is built using iNotes, and I will deep dive into this in a future edition). This is one of the most refreshing books you will ever read about personal productivity hacking.

📰 Articles

Andrew Huberman’s Mechanism’s of Control: The Private and Public Seductions of the World’s Biggest Neuroscientist, New York Intelligencer: Without a doubt one of the top trending articles at this very moment on the interwebs, this is a riveting read with salacious details about the private life of now world-renown Stanford University professor and podcaster Andrew Huberman. There is also a broader, underlying question — is this a highly inappropriate invasion and attempted public shaming that should never have been published in the first place, or does becoming famous automatically void one’s right to a private offline life today in 2024?

We would love to hear your thoughts! Leave your comments below. See y’all next week 🙏

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